Twining Vines
by Uruviel Elensar
Summary: James Potter never had a son. Lily had an accident and was unable to have children. Except now, James Potter's world can't defeat Voldemort, and he has to find a universe that did, or will… And in this world, he finds an orphaned Harry Potter.


Prologue: It's time

The sprawling neighborhood was one of England's finest. Large manor houses were lushly overgrown. The smell of jasmine was thick. A copse of it that had once grown sparingly over a gazebo had completely taken it over. Several other signs of neglect showed on the extravagant houses: lawns taken over by weeds as tall as people, sculptures gone green with algae, and tall spiked metal fences completely encased in vines.

The house James and Lily picked as the site for their ritual still had a bit longer to go before it was completely seized by nature, but it still displayed that its human owners had long since abandoned them. The windows had gone black with dust and the white paint had gone gray and was starting to peel. Carefully pruned trees had overgrown their boundaries. Mightily standing by the house, the thick arms of the trees were eclipsing the dispirited house, slowly enclosing it in darkness.

James sat on the cold stone stairs in the basement. It was so dusty that earlier when they were clearing a space for their magic circle, he'd had a sneezing fit that lasted five minutes. Lily had forced him to sit in the corner. It was to both get him out of her way and to put him in the path of the fresher air coming from the first floor's opened door.

James wiped his still dribbling nose on the sleeve of his "hoodie" (that was what Lily called it.) Except for the magic circle that Lily was drawing on the floor, they had gone full muggle. They were both dressed in muggle clothes, and as James zipped up the warm and comfortable muggle "hoodie" he found that he had grown a preference to them. While Lily and James had been back in England, they'd had to pass as muggles to avoid drawing Death Eater notice. Lily had delighted in acquainting him with muggle food, music, and vi-de-os.

The only light they were using was a tiny muggle lantern that produced an eerie blue white light that felt so cold and lifeless to him. But they couldn't use their wands for light. The Death Eaters, after all, had found a way to trace active magic used by any adult wizard within a certain set of boundaries, which included the entirety of England.

When Lily finished the last line, James expected the circle to light up with elemental magic right away as her previous ones had. But this circle stayed dark.

"It's a much bigger circle and the node is much bigger than the ones we used before. It'll take longer for it to power up." Lily squinted at her work. "It's like trying to divert part of a river. It takes time."

James smiled when she anticipated his question. She knew him so well.

Lily smoothed back her short brown bob, leaving white streaks of chalk behind. The brown hair felt odd, but her red hair had just been too distinctive; especially since the thick England crowds had been reduced to only Death Eaters and tiny population of muggles.

Tired of the fight, and nursing their wounds, they had once fled to France, and the Death Eaters had still found them.

Several times.

It seemed Voldemort held grudges very well, and he didn't like that there were people that had escaped him. So, they came back to England. This was their home, and their best chance to destroy Voldemort was here.

Though they had the choice to live their lives out in the world as fully muggle, Lily and James loved magic too much, and their sense of justice couldn't leave the situation in England as it was.

The rest of the magical communities might believe that Voldemort would be content with England, but they had faced Voldemort. They knew the madness in him. It was like Fiendfyre: a constant, ever growing hunger. The more it ate, the more it wanted to consume. So here they were, in the thick of danger, still trying to fight the good fight.

"So. It's ready?" James broke the tense silence.

Lily didn't answer. She bit her lip, and slumped over. Parts of her hands were still covered in chalk dust and her knees ached from being on the floor for so long. She rubbed her hands over her throbbing thighs to get rid of the chalk. She winced when her back protested as she straightened from her bent over position. Lots of other parts of her were aching as well. She'd never been as active as James, enjoying quidditch and such. The long, long days of walking when they weren't able to get a ride from a passing muggle were wearying on her body.

She very slowly rose from her kneeling position. It was quite difficult as she was stiff, and she couldn't touch the ground or she risked damaging her lines. She wobbled and almost fell, but James was there to catch her.

"Lily?" James pulled her up and away from the formation. He cradled her in his arms.

She clung to him, her face buried in his neck. This man had once been her greatest irritant. She wouldn't have called him her greatest enemy, because that title was reserved solely for Voldemort. But year after year, he got in her way, trampled on her feelings, and tried to take privileges that were not his.

And yet now he was her husband: the one person she did not want to live without.

They stood there silent for several moments. Lily tried desperately to build up her courage for what she was going to say. It was harder than it had ever been. She had used her courage so much over the years to do things she never wanted to do that it was becoming harder and harder to find it. It was like an old well: she had reached down to fill her bucket, and she found nothing left.

Finally, the silence had gone on too long, so she just said it afraid. "James," she whispered. "Someone's going to have to stay behind. I've gone through the calculations. Someone has to be here to tie the traveler back home, so that they are able to return. I have to recreate the magical circle in this world to be able to pull you back to it."

James was silent. They were constantly being chased as it was. If Lily was on her own…

"But you didn't do that before."

Lily sighed and tugged on her hair, turning away from James. "The amount of magical energy needed to fuel the circle for an adult wizard would implode the node and destroy the circle." James understood. That meant the circle or node wouldn't be available to pull back a wizard after a set amount of time.

"Why didn't you tell me that before?" It came out somewhat more tersely than he wanted. It was just another complication upon a whole mountain of complications. And he was so tired…

Tears began spilling from her eyes, but she clenched her fists. "We've been so busy. I only finished the calculations for the return trip last night. I-" I'm sorry. She couldn't say it. Not because of pride, but because the words wouldn't do anything.

The reason for their busyness was that every time Lily had tested the ritual, they had to flee Death Eaters. It even happened outside of England. Voldemort either must have found a way to track their specific magical signature, or he had people in every part of the world in his pocket, which really said something about his priorities.

Thank goodness that inert magic was untraceable so they only had to worry when they performed magic.

Lily started small, with mice and rabbits. She created the ritual so that the animals wouldn't have to do anything. The circle would automatically pull them back after a specific period of time. But that was for a tiny living creature with no magic. The formation was completely untested for magical creatures, let alone fully grown wizards. Unfortunately, it was extremely hard to find magical creatures in muggle areas.

Uh oh. She's crying, James thought, catching sight of her shaking shoulders. Lily turned back to cling to him, her body shaking. Damn, she's _really_ crying. Fix it, stupid. "I'll stay behind." He rubbed her back, his head leaning against hers.

Lily shook her head. It took her several moments to speak. "Whoever stays behind has to be a master of runes and charms. Unfortunately, I really don't think you have the qualifications."

James uneasily thought of Lily, here in England, on her own. And he wouldn't be here to protect her. Lily would probably smack him if she could hear his thoughts.

Careful to speak gentler this time, he asked. "Who else do we know that could operate the circle?"

Lily didn't answer. Who did they know that wasn't dead or in hiding?

Even assuming they could find allies overseas who would be willing to help them, they would have to escape England and then return. They could have avoided all of this if they had found more allies before they had left France, but Lily hadn't even been a fourth a way through the calculations for the first ritual. It had mostly been an unborn dream, a wish that hadn't fully materialized. And now they were suddenly on the verge of sending James to an alternate reality.

Plus, the overall political situation was very tense. The world's magical community was very aware of the Dark Lord Voldemort, and the threat he posed. Nobody wanted him aimed in their direction. Every time they brought the subject up, people would either find a way to change the topic or flee.

James tried to put a smile in his voice. "We could always go to Egypt. I don't think Death Eaters are fond of sand."

Lily sniffed into his neck. "No one will ever be safe while he's alive. We'll never be safe while he's alive." Lily's fingertips ghosted over her stomach. "And whatever secrets Voldemort is keeping, whatever magic is holding him to this world… Maybe Severus could have found it, but…"

She didn't need to finish her sentence. They had all lost many friends over the years.

He did agree with her, but…"I don't want to leave you here alone. There's too many ways this could go wrong, and we don't have allies. Maybe we could leave England and try to find someone else to help us perform the ritual."

"No!" Lily thrust her adamant chin forward. "If we want a chance of defeating Voldemort, the ritual has to be done here. Even if we can't feel his magic, it's everywhere. England is the source of the problem. The calculations all agree that in order to find the most compatible universe, the answer to our question, we have to be as close to the problem as we can be."

"I just…" Lily moistly said. "It might be years before you can find the secret…"

"Lily." He paused, and said something that had been on his mind for a little while. "Why don't we both go? And just not come back."

It was the cowardly thing. Ten years ago he would never have said it. But hadn't they paid enough? Hadn't they earned a peaceful life already? Why should this fight be squarely on their shoulders?

Lily stepped away from him. She was shaking. At first he thought she might still be crying, but when she raised her face, though her face was tear-stained, her eyes were a fierce, thunderous edge of green. "James Potter! Tell me that that selfish, self-centered thing did not just come out of your mouth. If you dare say anything like that again, remember I've beat that attitude out of you before. I can do it again!"

"Lily." He stepped forward, into her, and cradled her face in his hands. He wiped away tears from those fierce eyes that had become slightly gentler with his gesture.

Despite the lack of the fiery red hair that had first drawn his attention, it was fire in her eyes that had kept him coming back to her. She had this vivacity, this spark of life and love that he hadn't seen anywhere else. James would say that this was the woman that had shaped him into who he was today. Who knew what kind of berk he would have become without her commitment to fairness, justice, and kindness in his life. He never wanted to know.

He hugged her. "I'm sorry, but I love you. I want you to be safe, and I want us to be together. If that's how you feel, then I will go, but I will come back as soon as possible."

He stepped away so that he could look her dead in the eyes, his hands gripping her shoulders. "And Lily? You should _never_ fear for me while I'm over there. Your priority is to take care of yourself. Do you have a plan?"

He knew that he didn't really need to ask. She always had a plan.

Lily nodded, wiping her face. "The ritual won't draw much attention to start off with because we settled on a ley line node and the magic for the ritual will be more inactive, elemental magic rather than active wizard magic until the transfer begins.

"However, once the circle is fully charged, you don't really need me here. I'll need you to give me at least twelve hours, so that I can escape the radius of the house and find a new place to hide. I'll travel as a muggle, and see if I can't find work as a server temporarily. We were always more distinctive together. It's doubtful with my disguise and without using magic that the Death Eaters would know who I am."

A lot of muggle towns had stayed mostly as they were, except they were under Death Eater rule. Some muggles just loved their land and their home too much, while others didn't have the money to leave. Of course, the Death Eaters tended to use muggles however they wanted and whenever they wanted, so it was par for the course that sometimes they would go to muggle towns and some muggles would disappear. Lily would have to be careful that she wasn't one of them.

"It's my plan to eventually leave England. Perhaps I'll take the long way around to America." It seemed like just the distracting adventure she needed to take a tour of the rest of Europe and then Asia before ending up in America. Of course, she would have to do it muggle-style. It was completely possible that for however long James was gone, she would have to behave entirely muggle.

It was something she was both dreading and relieved about. Magic was a wondrous dream and a terrifying nightmare all at once. To go back to being completely muggle was akin to waking up in a world where there was no music, when in your dreams you had been an award-winning singer.

James fiercely embraced her. In less than a day, they were going to be separated. He had to hold her as much as he could right now. "It's going to be hard leaving England. They have all the borders Vipered now."

The Viper was a magical rune trap connected to the ley lines bordering England. Anyone without a Dark Mark would be poisoned as soon as they crossed it, and the Death Eaters would be instantly alerted. If you didn't die from the poison, the Death Eater would be right there to finish you off.

Lily snorted. "It's a rune trap, and I'm a rune master. I'm pretty sure I can find a way around it."

If anyone could say that, it was Lily.

Lily continued to ramble. James let her as it was distracting her. "This ritual has never been attempted on a human before. I have only the equation's assurances that you will be safe going through, and the tests that we tried. We don't know if there will be any side effects. You could get sick. You could get hurt. We don't have any way to prepare for that. I don't even know if items can be brought over." Lily smirked. "You might even end up naked. Better brush up on your weaving skills."

James grinned. "Hey, I trust you. Your ability with runes is amazing. Everything will go wonderful."

He stroked her face. "Come on, let's go upstairs."

Needless to say, she agreed. It would be the last time in a while that they would be able to be together.

To occupy his time as Lily left on foot to the next town, he consumed all of the leftovers in the pantry.

After the last row of kisses, the many ways he had touched her and embraced her, the way he tried to impress her form in his memory, he felt that he should feel full of her. But from the moment the door closed behind her, the silence of the house still made him ache from her absence.

The food was barely a distraction, but he needed the energy. The journey to the other world would surely use a lot of his magic power to make sure he arrived safely.

There was some canned goods left; things the owners didn't feel were important enough to take with them when they fled. He had loaded up Lily on them before she left, however he kept a few items back that he didn't feel were absolute necessities for her.

One of them was a can of peaches and he took especial pleasure in consuming the whole thing. Sugar was a weakness of his, and one he'd had a difficult time indulging during this conflict.

Unfortunately, none of the utilities were working, not even the water, so he couldn't even take a shower.

Despite how tempted he was, he would bring almost nothing with him—just what he could carry in his pockets. Lily didn't know or understand what extra mass would do to the transportation, but it was better to be cautious and assume that anything extra would be detrimental. He really didn't want to end up missing a body part because he took too much.

Right before James went to activate the circle, he started a fire in the attic of the house. He didn't think he should fire off any spells while in the midst of the circle because it could interfere with the transportation and possibly completely destabilize the extremely complex formation. Before when Death Eaters had attacked them, they had a brief span of time to fire off a reducto to destroy the evidence of their work. However, this time no one would be here to do so.

Lily's work was the stuff of the Department of Mysteries. It was ground-breaking, literally world-altering research, and it had taken her years to accomplish. He didn't want anything of Lily's in Voldemort's hands.

He also wasn't sure exactly when the node would explode, or if the explosion would be enough to delete the magic circle. But when Death Eaters found this place, he wanted to make sure that they had no evidence of their presence, no indication of what they were trying to do.

He knew the circle was fully charged when he stepped down into the basement because it radiated an alternating spectrum of colors bright enough that he could read with it. He cut off the muggle light as its now flickering energy clashed with the magic running rampant in the basement.

James fingered his wand, but left it in his pocket. Lily had warned him how unstable the circle would be to any active magic.

The formation spread out before him: a dizzying array of lines, circles, and runes. It looked organized, but as someone that had never taken the runes class, he couldn't make heads or tails of it. He'd seen rune circles before, notably the precursors to this one, but those had never been as convoluted as this one.

He stepped into the circle. The magic vibrated through him and the air around him, making it hard to breathe. The light of the circle steadied into a blue-green with a hint of purple.

Then he stumbled and fell when an explosion ripped overhead. He heard a crack, and barely had enough time to roll out of the way as a support beam tumbled down. He looked up and saw a dark shape at the edge of the hole in the ceiling.

Death Eater.

James returned fire as he retreated behind a stack of shelving. Very fast, he flicked his eyes over to the ritual circle which had started to gently pulse. He had a little time, but not much. Because he had already ignited the magic in the circle, if he wasn't in that circle when the magic peaked, it could potentially implode.

Most importantly, who knows what would happen if a Death Eater was sent over to the other world in his place? Possibly nothing. They had no knowledge of the circle, their work, or any way to return. If James died here, and Lily attempted to call him back from the other world nothing would happen, because the return circle would be tailored to his specific magical signature.

But the circle was James's chance, his one shot to find an answer to their very big, very dark, and very frustrating problem would be gone. It had taken ages to find an unoccupied magical node in England with enough power to send him over. Who knows if or when they would find another, outside of wizarding villages or Hogwarts? Those were places carefully monitored by the very people from which they did not want to draw the attention.

James swore when not just one or two Death Eaters joined in at the hole in the ceiling, but three—making it four people he had to fight off before he could leave.

One Death Eater prematurely smoked down, and James banished the wooden beam at his head when he materialized. One down; however, that fellow was probably new. The other Death Eaters remained on the upper floor, despite that they didn't have a clear range of vision. He was grateful that they all were careful to avoid hitting the pulsating magic circle, but he presumed they knew better. They might kill James, but it would also kill them, too.

They started mass firing curses at him, hoping to slip something past the shelving that was blocking them from hitting him accurately. James knelt down as objects exploded over him. Some of them hit the wall behind him and broke or ricocheted.

And in the corner something caught fire.

One of them tried to banish the shelving he was hiding behind, but he aimed a sticking curse at the bottom of the shelving to halt it. James was quick to retaliate. His best ability was transfiguration, and he had been in his fair share of magic fights so he knew what worked best. Transfiguration worked off a good imagination, and his was more than good.

He banished items at them. He had an ample supply as the basement was packed with things. Some of them he would hit with a transfiguration in midair, and then, using them as a distraction, he hit the Death Eaters with spells.

Some were innocuous: a rubber ducky squeaked when it bounced off a Death Eater's mask (he looked down to see what hit him and James got him with an _incarcerous_); a diaphanous sheet that floated in midair as he shot curses through it (unfortunately both of them dodged); he transfigured a sparkly pink lampshade just because he thought it was funny (that hit but otherwise barely did anything).

Finally, as the magic circle started to pulsate more wildly, James got serious.

He threw a couch at them.

He had to banish several items for that one, and it took a clever bit of timing and wand waving to make sure that it both got through the hole in the ceiling, and that he got each item within the transfiguration. He also had to make sure that they didn't have enough time to react, so that it hit them.

When they failed to reappear, he dove for the circle. He knew they weren't permanently down, but he didn't have anymore time. The magic was peaking.

The light was so bright that it almost seemed solid. The magic energy did a tumbling dance like fire. This magical fire didn't burn him, but it tingled on his skin like the bite of cold air mixed with the frenetic zing of lightning. He breathed in that magical fire, and his insides began to pulse in tune with the circle. He was so distracted that he almost didn't notice the man that he had brained with the beam was moving.

And he was aiming his wand at James.

James knew he couldn't move. The circle was seconds away from teleporting him. He risked a hasty shield, despite knowing how dangerous it was. It only half-formed inside of the buffeting waves of energy and then quickly dissolved under the pressure.

And then his wand crumbled in his hand.

He saw the spell getting closer and closer. Before he even had a moment to feel any horror, however, his body started to dissolve. He felt himself getting lighter and lighter as his body grew transparent. It felt like he was merging with the magical energy that started to shoot higher, extending up through the house and beyond.

The spell hit the column of magic. James could see that at the base of the circle, the energy was turning an intense crimson, but he was already floating away.

Into the sky.


End file.
